Re­pair bill for Tim Hor­tons Field climb­ing to $4 mil­lion

If you’re keep­ing track, the city now ex­pects to spend up to $4 mil­lion fix­ing lin­ger­ing prob­lems in its new foot­ball sta­dium.

Since the $145-mil­lion sta­dium was handed over late and un­fin­ished be­fore the 2015 Pan Am Games, the city has stepped in to fix ev­ery­thing from leaks to miss­ing draft beer lines to un­safe rail­ings to rain-dam­aged tele­vi­sion screens.

The city has also paid to power the sta­dium with emer­gency gen­er­a­tors af­ter a trans­former blew and com­mis­sioned a safety au­dit af­ter a tower speaker plunged into the empty seats last sum­mer.

An­other $1 mil­lion or so in work is still needed, said fa­cil­i­ties head Rom D’An­gelo Wed­nes­day fol­low­ing a closed-door meet­ing up­date on the sta­tus of du­elling law­suits be­tween the city, Hamil­ton Tiger-Cats, prov­ince and sta­dium builder over who is to blame for con­struc­tion de­lays and de­fi­cien­cies.

There was no pub­lic up­date on the law­suit, but D’An­gelo said the city is pre­par­ing to spend up to $500,000 ex­tra to fix sound and video sys­tem prob­lems at Tim Hor­tons Field. Other me­chan­i­cal and elec­tri­cal is­sues will also even­tu­ally be ad­dressed, as well as “mi­nor” leak­ing on the east side of the stands.

A sep­a­rate half-mil­lion-dol­lar con­tract re­cently closed to fix more se­ri­ous ex­pan­sion joint leaks on the west side of the sta­dium that dam­aged club suites.

D’An­gelo stressed lo­cal tax­pay­ers are not on the hook for any of the fixes so far be­cause the city with­held sev­eral mil­lion dol­lars in sta­dium pay­ments to the builder.

At one point, the city said it had more than $6 mil­lion in “hold­back” pay­ments avail­able. It’s not clear how much of that money re­mains, but D’An­gelo said so far all re­pairs by the city have been cov­ered.

HAMIL­TON SPECTATOR FILE PHOTO

A tower speaker at Tim Hor­tons Field plunged into the empty seats last sum­mer.